The former poll asking this question is hopelessly outdated. When it was started, Vorbis had no hardware support, AAC was very little supported (iPod didn't support AAC, iTunes hadn't been released for Windows, the Nero AAC codec was still to be launched), and there was lots of hope surrounding MPC SV8.

The scene changed considerably since then, so I believe it's worth starting a new poll, showing how the forum member's habits changed in two years.

Regards;

Roberto.

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Get up-to-date binaries of Lame, AAC, Vorbis and much more at RareWares:http://www.rarewares.org

I haven't really changed in the past few years: lossless (or just plain old CD's) for home use, MP3 for portability. I've dabbled with AAC and MPC along the way, but they don't meet my needs for various reasons.

I certainly hope that, in this day and age, nobody is still using VQF. Or at least they won't admit to it

If people answered to the previous poll and changed their behaviour since, it could be interesting to notice this change.

I voted for musepack long time ago, but now, it's lossless for PC listening. MP3 is still necessary for my portable players. For lossy, I'd probably keep MPC, according to the results of my listening tests on classical music.

Like many other people, I have a large mp3 collection. 95% of my (mp3 encoded) full albums are --aps or higher. I recently began sharing mpc files, which i LOVE. slightly smaller in some cases and even sound better. I've ripped my favorite albums to mpc. I have a decent mpc collection.

My problem has most recently become hardware support. See, I've got an IPOD, which doesnt support MPC. At first, I didnt consider this a big deal because I could easily use mpxchange to convert to mp3 and transfer my songs.

But it becomes inconvenient when I'm on the way out and I get the urge to throw an album on the ipod to take with me. I hate having to sit there and wait for an album to transode before I leave the house.

What I think I might do is transcode all my mpc albums and just keep 2 copies of the album on my drive (I'm not pressed for space or anything, so that doesn't matter).

MP3Pro, because at 80kbs it sounds better to me than HE-AAC at same or even 96kbs. Plus no hardware support for HE-AAC....

***Edited Part***Wish they had SBR for Vorbis(that had hardware support also) and wished that the encoder was LAME that did the mp3 encoding part in the nero MP3pro encoder. I goofed off a little awhile back to see if I could see if there was an easy way to rip the SBR info out of the mp3pro file, then re-encode at the appropriate cut off point in LAME and add it back. Didn't look so simple though...

I voted Lossless only. I changed from Monkey's Audio to FLAC due to smoother playback, though I sometimes encode from FLAC to some lossy format, usually Ogg Vorbis, to give my friends some samples. I use Ogg Vorbis rather than MusePack for this because I know the former better.

The shortest answer is Ogg Vorbis to play on my Palm Tungsten T3. It seems to be the best portable option for me (quality on mid bitrate and existing support). I can play MP3 and WMA, also, if necessary.

well, I voted for MP3, though I use FLAC to archive everything and transcode. I only use MP3 because Im forced to. I would prefer MPC but there just isnt support for it in any hardware (little support for AAC or Vorbis either)

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Ever since I bought my H120 I've pretty much been using Vorbis exclusively, though I still have many Musepack (which I love but no hardware support) and FLAC files. I voted Vorbis as it's probably the format I encode to most nowadays simply for ease of use and transfer to my portable. Since it supports vorbis I never encode to mp3 anymore and the only mp3s I have are downloads.

I use standard MP3, if AACPlus cmd line Encoder comes available for the Public, i will use AACplus.Reason:It is the only compression algorythm for the forseeing future, and one of the best at Low Bitrates, and it is mpeg Standardized.

I chose lossless because that's all I rip to for myself nowadays, however, I still rip things to mpc for friends who have slow connections or aac for those who use macs and that's what I receive from them. So I use all 3 formats quite heavily I just prefer lossless for my own personal circumstances.

I'm not a big fan of lossy formats, when I had M-Audio Revolution 7.1, I used MPC quite a bit, but after getting Dynaudio Audience 42 speakers I lost my feelings to MPC and. Now with RME Hammerfall DSP 9632 I don't have that big placebo effect anymore, maybe it's because Revo sound was harsh.For lossy formats I'd choose Vorbis since MPC is quite dead and it's not for portables, but audiophiles don't use lossy